


In the Heart of Darkness

by orphan_account



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Anal Fisting, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Double Anal Penetration, Double Penetration, Double Penetration in One Hole, Explicit Sexual Content, Forced Rape, Gang Rape, Graphic, Graphic Description, Humiliation, Hurt Zuko (Avatar), Hurt/Comfort, I am a good person I swear, I'm Going to Hell, Imprisonment, Incest, Lemon, M/M, Porn, Porn With Plot, Rape, Rape By Proxy, Rape/Non-con Elements, Smut, Torture, Uncle/Nephew Incest, Whump, Zuko (Avatar) whump, anal rape, but also the most eloquent porn you will ever read, graphic depiction of rape, non consensual anal fisting, seriously this is some fucked up shit, you will need eye bleach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-03
Packaged: 2021-01-21 01:08:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21291215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: When Jet called them out in front of the tea shop, it had been Zuko and Iroh who were taken away by the Dai Li. Deep in the heart of darkness under Lake Laogai, the two are forced to commit atrocities to each other, subject to the torments of a cruel Dai Li leader who knew far too clearly the true identity of the two, and was determined to break them in the most sadistic way possible.Please heed the tags and precede with caution! Or y'know, just don't read this. Just because I'm going to hell doesn't mean you have to join me there!
Relationships: Iroh/Zuko (Avatar)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 156





	In the Heart of Darkness

When the bag over Zuko’s head was yanked off roughly, they were already encased in darkness save for the dimly lit candle lanterns along the stone pillars they walked past periodically. He was assured to see that his uncle had still been by his side, marched down the walkway by a Dai Li agent holding his arm behind his back, with several more flanking their sides.

Zuko wagered that they were underground. There was definitely a thick layer of solid earth blanketed above him, shielding him from Agni’s force. He thought he could hear the faint rushing of water over his head, too, and down behind the stone walls around them. Everything was stone. It felt uncompromising, impenetrable, but at the same time suffocating, as if it were waiting to collapse and bury them alive any moment. 

They descended another level and the surroundings got impossibly darker and damper. The Dai Li in front of them fumbled at a set of keys, and jolted a metal door open. The axes and bolts creaked and moaned as it opened, and Zuko was shoved inside roughly, the force propelling him forward throwing him off his balance, and he landed on all fours in a stack of hay. A moment later, his uncle joined him on the prison cell floor.

They left, closing and locking the bars behind them. Zuko listened to the rhythmic, uniform marching of the agents fading down the tunnel, and surveyed his environment as best as he could, making out dim silhouettes and shapes in the barely existent light.

Their cell wasn’t big, but it was comfortably sized and not too cramped, even for the both of them. There were two patches of thick hay on either side of the cell, and a primitive chamber pot in the far corner. The prince noted that they had at least been kept in the same place - the same cell, no less. This would make their escape infinitely easier when the time came.

He stood up and walked over to the front of their prison, hand closing around the pungent iron bars as far apart as the chains connecting them allowed them to be. Frustration bubbled up his throat as he let out a shout of anger, an equally chained foot swinging up to give the doors a clumsy kick, the metal’s clatter echoing all the way down the hall.

“_Argh!_ This is all your fault!” Though he didn’t turn around to address the older man, it had been clear who Zuko was talking about in the space which only contained two people. “You’ve done nothing but put us in danger since we’ve been in exile, and most of the time for nothing but your _precious tea!_ I can’t believe you blew our cover by_ firebending, _just because you wanted some fucking hot leaf juice!”

“Language, nephew.” Iroh answered amicably, sitting on the hay pile with his knees spread flat and feet together, no trace of annoyance or defensiveness in his voice as he watched the young prince yell to his heart’s content, punctuating every few words with a punch or kick to the bars.

“Who _fucking_ cares, there are only the two of us here. In case you haven’t noticed, uncle, we’re trapped in a fucking _Earth Kingdom prison_. How the fuck are you not panicking yet? They’ll probably torture us for information on the war, or even worse - hand us over to Azula!”

“I am well aware of that fact, dear Zuko. But neither profanity nor panic will serve any purpose in getting us out of the situation.” The old man soothed, seeing through his nephew’s tantrum as just a facade for his fear and anxiety. As much danger and violence as Zuko had seen, some of his naivety and insecurities as a sixteen-year-old boy still remained, and shone through in times of distress.

“We’ve gotten out of worse situations before. The Dai Li knows I am a firebender, but they know nothing about you, or our status, enough to either dedicate any real effort to tormenting us, or alert their enemy about our existence. The wisest course of action now is to avoid giving anything away in a moment of hot-headedness, retain a level mind, and keep our cover.”

At his uncle’s words, the young prince seemed to have calmed down slightly. He opened his mouth to reply, but quickly snapped it shut again when he heard footsteps approaching. A Dai Li agent appeared, cranked a small flap open at the bottom of the door, and pushed two trays through, one after the other.

The daggered glares Zuko had been shooting towards the man through the bars had been lost in the hazy light, and soon the Dai Li was on his way out once again. He passed a tray to his uncle, and picked up his own. There was a bowl of plain rice, topped generously with two slices of unidentified meat and some vegetables, next to which laid half a cup of water.

“No tea.” Iroh remarked wistfully, earning a low growl from his nephew, as he dug in.

There were no cutlery, so they resorted to balling up the oily balls of rice to wrap the toppings and bringing the bundle up to their mouths awkwardly, working around the short metal constraints which bound their wrists together.

After they’d finished and downed the water to wash the food down, Zuko pushed the trays back through the flaps they came through, checking for a possibility of a weakness that could work to their advantage, without any luck, as Iroh laid himself down on the makeshift mattress.

“Why don’t you come get some shuteye, Zuko?” He called.

“I’m looking for a way to escape.” The boy addressed gritted out through clenched teeth, shaking and prying each bar experimentally, “unless you forgot, we don’t plan on staying here forever.”

“No, of course not, nephew. But it’s been barely a couple hours since they took us, it must still be dark outside. Even if we do make it out, and we are much too tired to give it our best fight, we would get lost in our surroundings, we have no idea where we are. It is much better to make a run for it in plain daylight, under Agni’s blessing. Come, you need to rest.”

As much as his uncle got on his nerves, Zuko did concede that he had a point. Begrudgingly, he treaded over to the other pile, plopped down with jerky movements as his hand and feet were still bound together, and laid flat on his back.

The soft snores of the old man came after a short while as Zuko laid in the monotone darkness, eyes wide open, for hours and hours until the shadows blended into one large canvas that moved in slowly towards him and he drifted off into unconsciousness.

* * *

Harsh lights and the sound of earth rumbling greeted them as they woke up, in what seemed to Zuko like mere minutes after he had closed his eyes. He rubbed the remainder of sleep away and looked around. The cell had gotten impossibly larger - though Zuko supposed it wasn’t really impossible when they were held captives by a group of earthbending agents - and their hay beds weren’t pressed up against the walls anymore, but lay in the centre of a large chamber.

A man stood in the middle of the chamber, facing them. He sported the standard Dai Li haircut which Zuko found immensely stupid, with the near-bald head at the front and a single long braid down his back. Though his attire was different to the standard uniforms among the agents, so the Fire Nation boy wagered that the man was in charge around here.

“Morning, lovely of you both to join us.” The man greeted, his voice low and dangerous, tone with a hint of cruel amusement to it. A line of a dozen or more Dai Li agents filed into the room to surround them as he spoke. “I was getting… anxious to begin.”

“I am Long Feng.” He announced as he made a series of quick jabs with his arms, and before Zuko could register what happened, he was lying flat on his back on a raised slab of stone that had not previously been there. There were a pair of agents working at his wrists and feet, unlocking the chains and pulling until he was spread eagled on the platform, before holding all four of his limbs down with earthbend rocks into the stone.

He turned his head towards his uncle to see if he received the same treatment, only to find the older man upright, with rocks encasing his legs up to his waist, and the chains around his wrists still intact.

Long Feng strode over to tower over Zuko, the slab he laid on only coming up to the agent’s waist. He held out a hand to hold the prince’s cheeks in a death grip hard enough for Zuko to see stars, and used the other to thumb the scar around his left eye roughly.

“And you, I’ve come to learn,” he continued, hand not leaving the boy’s face, “are Crown Prince Zuko and General Iroh of the Fire Nation.”

So much for keeping their cover.

“Please, Sir.” Iroh pleaded desperately in an attempt to divert Long Feng’s attention from Zuko, as the man was now taking a large knife and made to advance towards the incapacitated boy. “My nephew was banished from the palace, we have been travelling for the past three years with no contact with the Fire Nation. If it’s information you want—”

“No.” The man cut him off with a chuckle, the cruel amusement growing stronger in his words, “there are no information we want. We do not involve ourselves in the affairs of the Kingdoms and Nations. After all, _there is no war in Ba Sing Se_. There is nothing you can offer us to get you out of this. My only wish is to torment you and _humiliate_ you until you beg for your deaths, and see what the princes of a Nation that had tried to breach the walls of this city are really made of.”

“Then please, take me. I was the General who led the siege. Do what you want to me, but leave my nephew out of this. He’s done not harm to the Earth Kingdom. He was far too young at the time of the siege, and far too young now, as well.”

Long Feng stopped in his tracks then, and looked up at Iroh pointedly, pondering him with the slightest smirk on his face for a long while before going back to his task at hand, taking the knife to Zuko’s clothes.

“Ah, dear General, so my sources are correct, it would seem. That you are following your nephew like a servant around the world, sacrificing your dignity to keep him out of trouble, subjecting yourself to the spoiled little boy’s orders, indulging the brat in his whimsical chase for the Avatar.”

Methodically, the knife sliced through Zuko’s rough Earth Kingdom robes as if it were butter, distracting the prince from the indignity of the man’s words with a worse form of degradation. It didn’t even cross his mind to protest what was being said about him and his uncle.

“You lost a son to us here at Ba Sin Se, did you not?” Long Feng continued to address Iroh as the fabric fell away layer by layer, first his robes, then his underclothes, “It would be a shame if you were to… lose another.”

He punctuated the conclusion of his sentence with a final, swift flick of the sharp metal in his hands, leaving Zuko laid bare and spread in front of the lineup of Dai Li agents and his uncle. A shiver ran down his spine as the cold humid air of the dungeon caressed his skin.Several small cuts from where Long Feng had nicked him - either accidentally or on purpose - burnt and throbbed sharply in stark contrast to the rest of him.

A small bottle was procured by his tormentor, and he plucked its cap off and tilted the ceramic container until oil dripped onto his fingers. Long Feng positioned himself between Zuko’s legs and reached forward, out of the sight of the boy who was unable to see what lay in store for him. The prince trembled in fear as he heard his uncle draw in a sharp breath and squeezed his eyes shut, the intentions of the Dai Li leader evident to him from a short distance away.

A slick finger breached his asshole, and he cried out in combined shock, anger, and pain. The boy turned his head to the side, once again looking to his uncle and finding a small solace in seeing the man’s eyes still squeezed firmly shut, as the finger massaged in and out. After what felt like an eternity of endurance, a second finger was added, and the motion shifted into scissoring.

Zuko clamped his teeth shut, gaze fixed firmly on Iroh, as each motion of Long Feng’s hand amplified through his sphincter muscles, and sent jerks and jolts up his spine. After a while a third finger was added and Zuko’s vision blurred. His uncle had pried his eyes open then, and held the boy’s stare with sad, distressed eyes, pointedly not looking at what was happening in the area below the young boy’s waist.

Finally, all digits were withdrawn and Zuko let out the breath he didn’t know he was holding, a single tear escaping his eyes as he pursed his lips between his lips, turning his head towards the ceiling directly above him. Long Feng made to move towards the rest of the Dai Li, who were staring still as statues, watching the scene unfold with eery, robotic gazes, but thought better of it in the last moment. He paused, pondered, then pivoted towards the upright prisoner.

“Come think of it, for your devotion to him, my dear General, I do believe you deserve having the first go at the young brat more than anyone else.” Long Feng declared, waving his oil-coated hands to move the rocks encasing Iroh closer to the platform upon which Zuko laid naked, and letting the constraints fall away.

“I— I’m afraid I don’t understand, Sir.” Iroh stated, trying to remain calm and neutral, though the panic, that had been rising in his voice and expression despite his efforts, indicated that he understood as clear as day.

“I’m asking you to fuck your nephew, General.” Long Feng ordered, sadism and glee dripping venomously from his tone.

“No.” Iroh said simply, clenching his jaw and looking the man square in the face, meek complacence falling away the instant the prospect of harming the boy he had come to see as his own was mentioned.

Unfazed, the Long Feng chuckled lowly, and held out his hand. A Dai Li agent placed a long metal poker in his hands, which he gripped by the handle side, and reached up to place the other end with a rounded tip into a candlelit lamp over the top of their heads.

“My apologies. I’m afraid I haven’t made myself clear. Either you fuck the prince yourself,” He drawled, rotating the poker for a few moments in the fire before pulling the reddened metal out and presenting it to the two prisoners, “or we find out today if firebender assholes _burn_.”

At this, Zuko made a choking sound as coherent words escaped him for the first time since his torture started. “No, no! Please!”

The smirk on Long Feng’s face grew even wider. 

“You hear that, uncle? Your nephew is begging you to fuck him. How _cruel_ would it be to deny the boy this request, hmm? Perhaps he wasn’t clear enough. Why don’t you ask again, little prince?” The man turned to Zuko and coked his head, sadistic glint in his eyes taunting him, “go on, look at you uncle, and ask nicely.”

Despite the situation, Zuko found the strength in him to glare at the man, lips screwed shut once again in defiance. But when Long Feng chuckled and moved the metal poker closer to his genitals - so close he could feel the scorching heat against his sensitive skin - he caved once again.

“Please,” he whispered, steadying his voice as much as he could and looking up to make eye contact with the old man, “let it be you, uncle. Let it be you.”

He screwed his eyes closed once more when Iroh moved out of sight, waiting for the penetration. There was shuffling, then silence, then more shuffling, and breathing. One minute, then two, the contact never came. Eventually Long Feng let out a dry bark of laughter.

“Oh _dear_, it seems we’re getting ahead of ourselves.” He remarked, strolling along the stone platform Zuko was bounded to, finger trailing idly from his pelvis up his abdomen and chest, making him shiver with disgust, “your uncle finds you so unattractive he can’t seem to get it up.”

In a series of swift earthbending sequence, the stone table holding Zuko fell away as he found himself dropped painfully onto the floor, and immediately forced into a kneeling position, his face centimetres away from the crotch of his uncle. The latter had kept his clothes on, genitals pulled out from where the robes and cloths parted, laying limply, exposed to the air.

Zuko stared, feeling hot tears pressing against the back of his eyes.

“Perhaps you could help an old man out, hmm, little prince?” Long Feng prompted, a firm hand on the back of his head pressed his face closer to his uncle.

The young prince glances up in a panic to find Iroh’s head bowed, stricken eyes looked back into his wide ones. He glanced down again, pondering the foreign organ in front of him. Then, drawing a deep breath and making up his mind, he took his uncle’s member gingerly with the fingertips of both he hands, and leaned in to close his lips around it.

“Careful with your teeth, now.” Long Feng teased besides them, “Wouldn’t want to hurt dear uncle with them, would we?”

He tried not to think about the _size_ of his uncle as he slackened his jaw as much as he could to accommodate everything in his mouth, his instincts kicking in to guide his tongue to move in circles up and down the skin. He’d never done this before, but close to three years spent on a ship had meant he’d picked up enough lewd talk from the crew inadvertently to fill in the blanks and give him a rough idea on what is pleasurable on the receiving end.

Above him, he could hear the faint, chocked moans escaping the clenched teeth of his uncle as the man tried his hardest to stifle them, his hands balled into fists at his side as he fought to not grab onto his nephew’s head. Silently, Zuko thanked the man for attempting to scavenge what little dignity he could spare for him.

Soon enough, he felt a hardness press against his throat as Iroh’s erection started to grow in Zuko’s mouth. He let it fall out of his mouth for a brief moment and gasped for breath, before pushing himself down once more and sliding his lips all the way to the base, then back up, and down repeatedly.

He could taste the fluid seeping out now, and he tried hard to suppress the gagging as he felt the salty pre-cum flow onto the base of his tongue, and down his throat. He continued the motion, feeling the urge to cry all over again.

“That’s enough.” Long Feng, who had been watching the scene unfold with a sick captivation, suddenly ordered, yanking them apart and replacing the stone table to place Zuko back onto it. “Wouldn’t want to ruin the main event now, would we?”

Long Feng laughed cruelly as he gestured towards the bound boy. His legs were lifted into the air this time, feet elevated and kept still in raised stone stubs, exposing his backside and asshole conveniently.

“Hurry up now, before it goes away again, and we’ll have to resort to the poker.” The torturer threatened, and motioned to pick up the large black stick that had been cast aside onto the floor during the previous session. That was motivation enough to prompt Iroh to climb onto the platform.

The breach finally came this time, and Zuko _screamed._

He hadn’t meant to. He could tell that his uncle had been trying to make the ordeal as easy for him as possible, and had wanted to return the favour. But over the duration of the blowjob his previously prepared hole had restored itself to some extent, most of the oil Long Feng had used on him had dried up, and his uncle’s girth was far thicker than the three fingers the other man had used up to.

Instantly, the pushing stopped as Iroh stilled, with only the tip of his member inside Zuko.

They stayed like that for a long while, Iroh waiting for his nephew’s breaths to settle, holding himself stationary until Zuko managed to choke out an assurance. “It’s okay. It’s— it’s— I’m okay.”

The pressing returned as more and more of Iroh’s length made its way inside him. And it _burned_. It burned more than Zuko had ever been burnt in his life, which, as his scar could testify for, was a lot. But he was made of fire, and he could work with fire. So he recalled the mediation and bending control exercises, and counted his seconds in a way that his uncle - _his uncle,_ who was now fully sheathed inside him - had taught him to.

“Look at him. Look at your boy in the eyes and _fuck him harder_.” The twisted, monstrous voice commanded.

Iroh began to thrust. Slowly at first, each pull felt like he was dragging Zuko’s entire intestines out, and each push like stuffing them back in. He felt like a rag doll as his uncle picked up pace, straw stuffings torn out and punched in, over and over again.

But he forced himself to hold his uncle’s pained gaze as stoically as he could, tried to not let the anguish show on his face as he cleared it of any emotions and simply stared ahead. When his eyes glazed over with tears, he blinked them away, and when he couldn’t do that anymore, he let them roll off his face - both the scarred and unscarred sides - but he held the gaze.

_I trust you,_ he chanted silently with his eyes, over and over again, matching the rhythmic sound of flesh hitting flesh, _I trust you, I trust you, I trust you._

“Please,” Iroh pleaded after eons of silence save for the collective breathing of the dozen or so Dai Li agents, and the sickening wet slaps of skin. He had ceased his movements, though still pressed inside his nephew’s asshole, fearing the consequences if he withdrew it without permission. “We did what you asked, now let us stop.”

Long Feng pretended to consider the request briefly, though it had been evident he was enjoying the show far too much to not try and milk everything they’ve got out of it.

“Oh, but what a shame it would be to not finish the act!” The man exclaimed with mock enthusiasm, “you would have made it this far for nothing. You are not to stop before coming inside your nephew.”

“Please.” Iroh whispered once more, far more weakly this time.

“Rest assured, at least the boy won’t risk carrying your child.” Long Feng contemplated in amusement, before snapping his head towards his two captives and growled lowly, “I _said_, continue.”

Iroh looked back down at the boy beneath him, then, shifting his weight onto one hand, he lifted the other hand to run through the young prince’s hair gently, a silent apology delivered in the gesture. In response, Zuko nodded softly.

The thrusts were faster now as Iroh strived for his release and to end the ordeal as soon as possible. Zuko screwed his eyes shut and bit his tongue so hard it drew blood. He tasted the sharp metallic fluid swish about in his mouth, and wondered in a moment’s morbidity if the hot wetness that had been flowing down the crack between his cheeks tasted the same.

He almost couldn’t hold back the retch building in his throat when he felt his uncle still, and the gush of burning cum shoot deep into his bowels, stinging and filling him.

Breathing heavily, Iroh climbed off him. And it was finally over.

* * *

Except it was far from over. 

Long Feng allowed Iroh a rug to clean himself off, tuck his member back into his loincloth, before bringing back the stone constraints and moving him to his initial position. Zuko noticed with rising panic that the man had made no move to free him. He was still bound onto the rock platform, arms stretched out on either side, legs bent up over his head, ankles locked down in raised pillars, a steady liquid mixture of cum and blood and feral matter dripping down his asscrack and onto the dirt.

Long Feng waved his hand once more. This time, it was not earth that was summoned forth, but, as Zuko noticed with dawning horror, the Dai Li agents - a little over a dozen - that had been standing and observing with deadpan silence up until now.

They fucked him with a sort of robotic dispassion, as if to fulfil an order and not out of any real desire. They fucked him brutally, and incessantly, for hours, and Long Feng stood and watched on the whole time with a depraved satisfaction.

_Seriously, does this guy not have a kingdom to run or anything? _Zuko once thought snarkily between bouts of intense pain. He didn’t know if he would have had the guts to remark that out loud, had his mouth not been stuffed with the cock of a Dai Li agent at the time.

Something rough pressed up against his entrance, and the firebender tensed up involuntarily, familiar with the sensation and knowing what was in store for him. Previously - _an hour ago? Two? Five? He had lost track of time and lost count of how many times he’d been stuffed and violated_ \- they had done it once, summoned a stick of stone up from the platform he laid on, thicker than anything he’d taken up until then, and impaled him by his hole while they took his mouth one by one until all of them had had a go.

Contrary to his expectactions, however, he had found whatever was working its way down there this time to be different than the rigid pole pinning him to place. It was rock alright, but this one _moved_, moved in a way that felt like… _fingers_?

He realised with horror that a rock glove was punching into him, just in time to brace for the searing pain of the fist opening him up. For the hundredths time that day (were they still even in the same day? It felt like it’s been _months_) he screamed. He screamed until his throat was raw and his voice hoarse. He screamed until the shouts and pleads of his uncle were completely drowned out.

He screamed as the jagged edged of the fist tore into him, and came out coated in blood and cum, and went in again, impossibly deeper into his stomach. He was still screaming when he blacked out.

He was being slapped when he came to, the gesture telling him with a sinking feeling that his torture had not been over. His bonds were broken and he was being lifted off the table, whimpering as his stiff muscles and joints were forced into a different position, straddling a Dai Li agent who sat on the edge of the table he had been laying on.

It didn’t even occur to him then how easily he could have firebended in that moment. Maybe not towards freedom, but at least in some form of retaliation to cause damage. The Dai Li had fucked all resistance out of him long ago.

He slid down the member of the agent easily, barely feeling the penetration anymore. But when after a few thrusts he was leant over, and a second tip pressed up against the first behind him. Zuko cried out.

“Please, please! Don’t, take it out take it out take it—”

A rock glove clamped over his mouth by an idle Dai Li agent as the second cock pushed in and began pounding him. Any scraps of dignity Zuko had fought so hard to retain hours ago vanished as he let the tears flow freely from his eyes clamped shut, hitched, ragged breaths wracking his lungs, and he _mewled_ weakly.

In the pained haze, he shamefully found himself craving the touch of his uncle. He remembered the first scream that tore its way out of his throat and echoed off these chamber walls, and how that entrance had been beyond gentle compared with what he’s had to endure since. He wanted that tentativeness back, the way Iroh had stopped as soon as he realised his nephew was in pain, the slow ins and outs, the affection in the hand brushing through his hair.

There was no intact flesh inside his mouth left to bite anymore, but Zuko bit down nonetheless, squeezing more blood out of the abused oral membranes as he took _everything_.

* * *

When they finally left, they gave them two buckets of clean water, a couple rags, and a new set of clean robes. Long Feng earthbent the walls back into its place, but the chamber felt far smaller and more cramped than the previous night. They had been allowed a bright lamp overhead to clean up under.

Iroh’s rock constraints fell apart as the bars of the cell door creaked shut, and the old man scrambled over to his nephew, ignoring the pain of the stiff joints from being bound tightly for an entire day.

Zuko hung limply off the stone pillar they left him impaled onto, and Iroh had to carefully sling the boy’s arm over his shoulder and lift him gently off the _horrifically_ long and thick rod. He laid Zuko onto his hay pile, before setting about wiping down his body with the cloth and water, listening out for the ragged breathing of the teenager in search for reassurance.

Iroh scooped out some clean water from the second bucket and coaxed Zuko into drinking it before using the rest for cleaning as well. He’d saved a square of clean rag to tear up and press into the boy’s bleeding anus by way of a gauze when he was done, before dressing him in the robes that had been left out.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He whispered, voice hoarse from the fruitless shouting he let out when he helplessly witnessed the agents’ brutalising of his boy, hand smoothing through Zuko’s hair, neck, and back as he pulled the young prince into a hesitant embrace, uncertain if he would want to be touch by his uncle ever again after what they had been forced to do.

The boy, however, eagerly leaned into the touch and clung onto the older man tightly as he let out a shudder that wracked his whole body and his uncle’s heart, breathing heavy and jagged.

“I’m so sorry, Zuko, I’m sorry.” The old man repeated mechanically, numbly, rocking them both back and forth. Eventually the candle burnt out and the darkness covered them, and after a couple more hours, the young prince’s breathing evened out as he drifted into sleep, too tired for the nightmares that would surely come in later days.

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly debated for a long time whether or not to post this as anon because it's just so,,, *not me*. But yet here we are, please don't judge me. *covers face in distress*


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